


in which there are ghosts

by OtherCat



Series: contra legem [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Implied Noncon, Implied Torture, No Miracles, NonSgrubAU, Religious Themes, Signlessists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 00:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/pseuds/OtherCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dirk Strider hangs around in the company of Neophyte Redglare and keeps an eye on his brother. </p><p>(contra legem side story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	in which there are ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pinnedbutterfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinnedbutterfly/gifts).



It’s not that you wake up. It’s more like you were standing there the entire time, long after the fact. You are leaning against a tree. It’s dark, and the park where you died has been cleaned up and the bodies are gone. Shrines have been put up, saints and powers invoked and offerings left. You don’t know how long it has been, or how long you’ve been standing there. It could have been a month, it could have been a year.

The teal blood with a broken neck is watching you, and you don’t know for how long. “Your brother’s safe for now, but justice will have to wait a while, Dirk Strider,” the teal blood said. You do not ask the teal blood how she knows your name. You don’t ask her for hers. “Where is he, Lady?”

“Arizona. In the military schoolfeeding facility called ‘White Tank,’” she said. “When you’re ready, you’ll be able to go there directly.”

You do not very much like the idea of your little bro being in a schoolfeeding facility. You also don’t much care for the idea of not being able to go there right now and somehow get him out of there. “What do I need to get ‘ready?’” you ask. The teal blood smiled. “Follow me,” she says. She turns and walks off.

Trying to follow her does not work at first. You manage to get six feet away from the tree you were leaning against when you are suddenly brought up short. There is an invisible chain wrapped around your spine, and the other end is wrapped around the tree. “The fuck?” You try pushing forward, but that just leads to bright sparks and misery. You discover that the chain is also intangible, which means you can’t really unhook yourself from it.

You look back in the direction the teal blood walked off in. She’s nowhere in sight, but on the off chance she’s still around you shout, “hey! Hey Neophyte!” in English. In slightly more polite Alternian you ask for some assistance. You do not get an answer. You feel pretty steamed by this situation but belatedly, you remember the Sign she gave you. The teal is a sister, a sister who has apparently been keeping an eye on your little brother for you.

Because she is a sister, you make a greater effort at not being annoyed. (Which you know is not technically acting in accord. Humans however have been letting their coreligionists off the hook for thousands of years now and there’s no reason in this case to break the tradition.)

You try to remember everything your teacher told you about the afterlife, which is not a lot. Your teacher did not have much interest in paramortem folklore. She taught you the sketchy version of the State Religion Signlessists followed, and that was about it. (The education has been a precisely useful to you as attending church two Sundays in a month and holidays has been.)

In both the xeno and anthro paramortem folklore, ghosts are often tied to the place where they died. Anecdotal evidence suggests this is true. The tree you are currently hobbled to is extremely familiar to you. There is nothing especially horrible about it though. It doesn’t fill you with horror or dread; it’s just a tree. At the same time, you know that if this tree were somehow put in a lineup of nearly identical trees, you know you’d be able to point it out. Yes officer, that’s the tree they hung me from before chopping off my dick and balls and ramming cattle prods into me.

Remembering the moment you died is not nearly as bad as living it. You are watching it from some limited third person perspective while simultaneously feeling it. What you’re feeling though is distant, not quite real, but real enough to make you sick. If you could puke, you would. Instead, you curl up; too sick to move until the memory play itself out.

When the memory is over you stagger back to your feet. You wonder how ectoplasm (or whatever material you’re currently comprised of) can feel nerveless and shaky. You eventually make the discovery that the invisible “chain” tying you to the tree is a little longer now.

It takes a few more repetitions of the memory before the chain is gone.

You walk in the direction the teal did. She is waiting for you. “Redglare Pyrope,” she says.

“Hero and Fool,” you say, because that’s what your teacher called her.

The grin somehow gets wider. “Your lineage?”

“Anroda Meilii, of Zahhak’s. She was a solitary. Is it important?”

“Only to me,” Redglare says. “And only because I am naturally curious.”

She has a lot of questions for you Redglare does, about everything. In exchange, she tells you everything you need to know. Your limitations and strengths, what you can and can't do. As an example, being fast as hell did not go away; however, your ability to interact with the material world is exactly nil. The closest you can get to interaction is stepping into someone's dream and talking to them (or fucking them up) there. Your biggest disadvantage is that it is really easy for any paramortem to spot you and banish your ass before you have time to blink if they decide you might be trouble. Redglare teaches you how to get around and how to get into and out of places that you might otherwise have trouble with.

Mostly, you watch Dave, even if watching him hurts like hell sometimes. Your little bro is a mess and there isn't a lot you can do about it. You are not alone in watching. There is a little girl-ghost with him, a friend of his, the daughter of someone who used to babysit him when he was younger. She died the same night you did, but she's been with him for longer. 

You watch a dark haired kid with bad teeth and the bluest damn eyes pull your little brother out of his shell. The kid will just not give up, no matter how hostile Dave is. You watch the kid encourage your little brother, talk to him, nag him. Dave gets stronger, wakes up in response to the kid, and despite the intensive schoolfeeding and none stop training, he actually thrives.

It's hard not to feel proud of him, and you wish you could tell him. Visiting in dreams doesn't really help all that much--you can't give him any kind of clear message. And you want to, god, do you want to. You watch his life fall apart again and it’s like your heart has been ripped into pieces.

You stay with him through it all. Redglare is on hand, keeping you from doing anything stupid while they take your brother apart and put him back together. “He will not die from this,” she tells you again and again. “There will be justice.”

“Right now I’d prefer this place blown off the map,” you tell her.

Dave comes out of training and eventually ended up in a slightly skeezy rental agency after a disastrous bullshit situation with some bitch who decided she was black for him and the idiot who tried to auspistize between them. His life settles down some after that. The new owner is skeezy but not a complete bastard and allows Dave some illusion of autonomy.

Every so often, Redglare drags you away and you end up talking to people you only know from scripture and commentary. You see your old teacher again and the little space of peace and quiet she finally created for herself. You track down your neighbors and see how they're doing, dead and alive.

But you always go back to Dave. There’s not a lot you can do to help, but you don’t let that stop you.

Dave decides to be a whistleblower, reporting something extremely illegal going on at the place where he had been leased. His owner is less than happy about the situation his own business is in now, and takes it out on him. You’re a little surprised to see a girl who looks just like Redglare charge into the room and clobber the asshole. Then she shoves him out of the room and interrogates Dave. She appears to be absolutely delighted by him, and after some more prying and the discovery that apparently, the only suitable asset is Dave she buys him outright.

You are extremely ambivalent about this. When Redglare turns up looking insufferably smug, ambivalence slides into aggravation. “Is there a reason you decided to give your Descendant a Strider of her very own?” You ask.

“How do you know I didn’t decide to give Dave a Pyrope of his very own?” Redglare asks.

You are less than impressed with this little witticism.

“You are not the only one who wanted justice, Dirk Strider. I am only attempting to move Dave in a direction where he might acquire it.” She sounds excessively reasonable. Again, you are not impressed.  

“Without telling me about it. He’s my brother.”

“And she’s my Descendant. She and her friends are all that Signlessists living and dead have worked for, all these sweeps,” Redglare said. “Give her a chance.”

“Fine,” You say. At the same time, some entirely, terrifyingly sincere Signlessist part of you is incredibly excited as Redglare elaborates on Junior and her friends.  

Redglare Junior is not someone you can warm to immediately. Even knowing what the kid is up to. She pushes at your bro, obviously testing him for the personality problems he’s supposed to have. Dave takes it, and pushes back a little as well. That seems to make her push back harder sometimes, poking at him until she gets him to explode. For a little while, you think this is a repeat of the situation with that goddamn bitch until you realize the pattern is different. She isn’t fucking with his head and then punishing him for stepping out of line, she’s fucking with the way he was trained, and giving him a different set of rules to follow.

“This is the first time she’s done something like this by herself,” Redglare says. This is after one of the times where Junior’s rehabilitation program ends with Dave getting his ass beat. Redglare might or might not be offering a sideways apology.

“Well, he doesn’t seem to be holding any grudges, so I guess I won’t.” You can be just as potentially sideways about accepting apologies.

Junior grows on you, mostly because you can see she she’s trying to help, and a lot of what she does seems to work. It’s pretty clear she’s developing a crush on your bro, like some kind of Nightingale thing. What surprises you is that some part of Dave is crushing pretty hard on her. You go into his dreams sometimes and Junior is up in his grill, or she’s interacting with the dream version of his friend Egbert, or telling him he has to take over the case for her except he’s in his underwear. She shows up in his nightmares too, mixed up with the bitch and other people he’s known.  

You know he worries and questions his feelings. That some part of him thinks you’d be ashamed of him in general and specific. You try to let him know that you love him and that whatever he’s feeling is valid, even if it might have been something put in his head. Redglare tags along. Everything turns symbolic and kind of stupid, so you give up and just give the kid shit until he flails and yells at you. (Which wakes him up of course; his attempt at explaining as little as possible makes you laugh.)

When Junior screws up, she does so in a major way. You are tempted to give her a visit, but she is spending most of the day doing the mental equivalent of beating her head against the wall and chanting, “stupid, stupid, stupid.” There is not much more you could add to this, except general agreement. In other words, she is doing a very satisfactory job of kicking her own ass, and needs no assistance.

The metaphorical ass kicking continues the next evening when Junior and your brother have a talk. He questions her and her motives, and Junior explains, apologizes and puts her feelings on the table. Puts herself on the table, telling your brother he can do whatever he wants to her. She is being completely sincere, and while Dave doesn’t believe it, he’s still moved by it. He makes a confession of his own. This is a smaller, quieter thing: an admission that he likes Junior.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has an [**ask blog**](http://contralegemasks.tumblr.com/ask).


End file.
